Jatropha: the Biofuel that Bombed Seeks a Course To Redemption

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Earlier this century, jatropha was hailed as a “wonder” biofuel. An unassuming shrubby tree native to Central America, it was extremely promoted as a high-yielding, drought-tolerant biofuel feedstock that might grow on degraded lands throughout Latin America, Africa and Asia.

A jatropha rush ensued, with more than 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) planted by 2008. But the bubble burst. Low yields led to plantation failures nearly everywhere. The consequences of the jatropha crash was polluted by allegations of land grabbing, mismanagement, and overblown carbon reduction claims.

Today, some researchers continue pursuing the incredibly elusive promise of high-yielding jatropha. A comeback, they say, is dependent on breaking the yield issue and resolving the damaging land-use concerns intertwined with its initial failure.

The sole staying large jatropha plantation is in Ghana. The plantation owner claims high-yield domesticated varieties have been achieved and a new boom is at hand. But even if this comeback fails, the world’s experience of jatropha holds important lessons for any promising up-and-coming biofuel.

At the start of the 21st century, Jatropha curcas, an unassuming shrub-like tree belonging to Central America, was planted across the world. The rush to jatropha was driven by its guarantee as a sustainable source of biofuel that could be grown on broken down, unfertile lands so as not to displace food crops. But inflated claims of high yields failed.

Now, after years of research and advancement, the sole staying large plantation focused on growing jatropha is in Ghana. And Singapore-based jOil, which owns that plantation, declares the jatropha resurgence is on.

“All those companies that failed, embraced a plug-and-play design of searching for the wild varieties of jatropha. But to advertise it, you require to domesticate it. This belongs of the process that was missed out on [during the boom],” jOil CEO Vasanth Subramanian told Mongabay in an interview.

Having discovered from the mistakes of jatropha’s previous failures, he says the oily plant might yet play an essential function as a liquid biofuel feedstock, lowering transport carbon emissions at the international level. A new boom could bring additional benefits, with jatropha also a prospective source of fertilizers and even bioplastics.

But some researchers are hesitant, keeping in mind that jatropha has actually currently gone through one hype-and-fizzle cycle. They caution that if the plant is to reach full capacity, then it is important to gain from past mistakes. During the very first boom, jatropha plantations were hindered not just by poor yields, however by land grabbing, deforestation, and social problems in countries where it was planted, including Ghana, where jOil runs.

Experts likewise suggest that jatropha’s tale uses lessons for researchers and entrepreneurs checking out appealing new sources for liquid biofuels – which exist aplenty.

Miracle shrub, significant bust

Jatropha’s early 21st-century appeal originated from its promise as a “second-generation” biofuel, which are sourced from yards, trees and other plants not stemmed from edible crops such as maize, soy or oil palm. Among its multiple purported virtues was a capability to prosper on abject or “marginal” lands; therefore, it was claimed it would never take on food crops, so the theory went.

At that time, jatropha ticked all the boxes, says Alexandros Gasparatos, now at the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Future Initiatives. “We had a crop that seemed amazing; that can grow without too much fertilizer, a lot of pesticides, or too much need for water, that can be exported [as fuel] abroad, and does not complete with food because it is poisonous.”

Governments, international agencies, investors and companies purchased into the hype, launching efforts to plant, or promise to plant, countless hectares of jatropha. By 2008, plantations covered some 900,000 hectares (2.2 million acres) in Latin America, Africa and Asia, according to a market research study got ready for WWF.

It didn’t take wish for the mirage of the miraculous biofuel tree to fade.

In 2009, a Buddies of the Earth report from Eswatini (still known at the time as Swaziland) alerted that jatropha’s high needs for land would indeed bring it into direct conflict with food crops. By 2011, an international review kept in mind that “growing outmatched both clinical understanding of the crop’s potential in addition to an understanding of how the crop fits into existing rural economies and the degree to which it can grow on marginal lands.”

Projections approximated 4.7 million hectares (11.7 million acres) would be planted by 2010, and 12.8 million hectares (31.6 million acres) by 2015. However, only 1.19 million hectares (2.94 million acres) were growing by 2011. Projects and plantations started to fail as expected yields refused to materialize. Jatropha could grow on abject lands and endure drought conditions, as claimed, but yields remained poor.

“In my viewpoint, this combination of speculative financial investment, export-oriented potential, and prospective to grow under relatively poorer conditions, produced a very big problem,” leading to “underestimated yields that were going to be produced,” Gasparatos states.

As jatropha plantations went from boom to bust, they were also pestered by ecological, social and economic difficulties, state experts. Accusations of land grabs, the conversion of food crop lands, and clearing of natural locations were reported.

Studies discovered that land-use modification for jatropha in nations such as Brazil, Mexico and Tanzania caused a loss of biodiversity. A research study from Mexico found the “carbon payback” of jatropha plantations due to involved forest loss varied between two and 14 years, and “in some scenarios, the carbon debt might never ever be recovered.” In India, production showed carbon benefits, but making use of fertilizers resulted in increases of soil and water “acidification, ecotoxicity, eutrophication.”

“If you look at most of the plantations in Ghana, they declare that the jatropha produced was situated on limited land, however the idea of marginal land is really evasive,” explains Abubakari Ahmed, a lecturer at the University for Development Studies, Ghana. He studied the implications of jatropha plantations in the nation over a number of years, and discovered that a lax meaning of “marginal” suggested that presumptions that the land co-opted for jatropha plantations had actually been lying unblemished and unused was frequently illusory.

“Marginal to whom?” he asks. “The fact that … currently nobody is using [land] for farming doesn’t suggest that nobody is using it [for other functions] There are a lot of nature-based incomes on those landscapes that you might not necessarily see from satellite imagery.”

Learning from jatropha

There are essential lessons to be gained from the experience with jatropha, say experts, which must be when thinking about other advantageous second-generation biofuels.

“There was a boom [in investment], however sadly not of research, and action was taken based upon supposed advantages of jatropha,” says Bart Muys, a teacher in the Division of Forest, Nature and Landscape at the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2014, as the jatropha buzz was unwinding, Muys and coworkers published a paper citing essential lessons.

Fundamentally, he discusses, there was an absence of understanding about the plant itself and its requirements. This crucial requirement for in advance research study could be used to other possible biofuel crops, he says. Last year, for example, his team launched a paper evaluating the yields of pongamia (Millettia pinnata), a “fast-growing, leguminous and multipurpose tree types” with biofuel guarantee.

Like jatropha, pongamia can be grown on abject and limited land. But Muys’s research study revealed yields to be extremely variable, contrary to other reports. The group concluded that “pongamia still can not be considered a substantial and steady source of biofuel feedstock due to persisting knowledge spaces.” Use of such cautionary data might prevent inefficient financial speculation and negligent land conversion for brand-new biofuels.

“There are other extremely appealing trees or plants that could act as a fuel or a biomass producer,” Muys states. “We wished to prevent [them going] in the very same direction of early hype and stop working, like jatropha.”

Gasparatos highlights important requirements that should be satisfied before moving ahead with new biofuel plantations: high yields should be opened, inputs to reach those yields comprehended, and a prepared market must be readily available.

“Basically, the crop needs to be domesticated, or [scientific understanding] at a level that we understand how it is grown,” Gasparatos states. Jatropha “was almost undomesticated when it was promoted, which was so strange.”

How biofuel lands are obtained is also crucial, says Ahmed. Based upon experiences in Ghana where communally utilized lands were purchased for production, authorities must guarantee that “standards are put in location to examine how massive land acquisitions will be done and documented in order to reduce some of the issues we observed.”

A jatropha comeback?

Despite all these difficulties, some scientists still believe that under the right conditions, jatropha could be a valuable biofuel solution – especially for the difficult-to-decarbonize transport sector “responsible for around one quarter of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“I believe jatropha has some potential, but it needs to be the best material, grown in the ideal place, and so on,” Muys stated.

Mohammad Alherbawi, a postdoctoral research fellow at Qatar’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University, continues holding out hope for jatropha. He sees it as a method that Qatar might reduce airline company carbon emissions. According to his estimates, its use as a jet fuel might result in about a 40% decrease of “cradle to grave” emissions.

Alherbawi’s team is carrying out continuous field research studies to enhance jatropha yields by fertilizing crops with sewage sludge. As an added advantage, he imagines a jatropha green belt spanning 20,000 hectares (almost 50,000 acres) in Qatar. “The execution of the green belt can really enhance the soil and agricultural lands, and protect them versus any further wear and tear triggered by dust storms,” he states.

But the Qatar project’s success still depends upon lots of factors, not least the ability to get quality yields from the tree. Another essential action, Alherbawi explains, is scaling up production technology that utilizes the totality of the jatropha fruit to increase processing effectiveness.

Back in Ghana, jOil is presently handling more than 1,300 hectares (1,830 acres) of jatropha, and growing a pilot plot on 300 hectares (740 acres) working with more than 400 farmers. Subramanian discusses that years of research study and development have actually resulted in varieties of jatropha that can now accomplish the high yields that were lacking more than a decade back.

“We were able to hasten the yield cycle, enhance the yield range and boost the fruit-bearing capability of the tree,” Subramanian states. In essence, he specifies, the tree is now domesticated. “Our very first project is to expand our jatropha plantation to 20,000 hectares.”

Biofuels aren’t the only application JOil is taking a look at. The fruit and its by-products might be a source of fertilizer, bio-candle wax, a charcoal replacement (important in Africa where much wood is still burned for cooking), and even bioplastics.

But it is the transportation sector that still beckons as the perfect biofuels application, according to Subramanian. “The biofuels story has actually when again resumed with the energy transition drive for oil companies and bio-refiners – [driven by] the look for alternative fuels that would be emission friendly.”

A total jatropha life-cycle assessment has yet to be completed, however he thinks that cradle-to-grave greenhouse gas emissions connected to the oily plant will be “competitive … These 2 elements – that it is technically ideal, and the carbon sequestration – makes it an extremely strong prospect for adoption for … sustainable aviation,” he says. “We believe any such growth will take location, [by clarifying] the definition of abject land, [allowing] no competitors with food crops, nor in any method threatening food security of any country.”

Where next for jatropha?

Whether jatropha can genuinely be carbon neutral, eco-friendly and socially responsible depends on complex factors, consisting of where and how it’s grown – whether, for example, its production design is based in smallholder farms versus industrial-scale plantations, state specialists. Then there’s the unpleasant issue of accomplishing high yields.

Earlier this year, the Bolivian government revealed its intention to pursue jatropha plantations in the Gran Chaco biome, part of a national biofuels push that has stirred debate over possible repercussions. The Gran Chaco’s dry forest biome is currently in deep problem, having actually been greatly deforested by aggressive agribusiness practices.

Many previous plantations in Ghana, alerts Ahmed, converted dry savanna forest, which became problematic for carbon accounting. “The net carbon was often unfavorable in most of the jatropha sites, since the carbon sequestration of jatropha can not be compared to that of a shea tree,” he discusses.

Other researchers chronicle the “capacity of Jatropha curcas as an ecologically benign biodiesel feedstock” in Malaysia, Indonesia and India. But still other scientists remain doubtful of the eco-friendly practicality of second-generation biofuels. “If Mexico promotes biofuels, such as the exploitation of jatropha, the rebound is that it possibly becomes so effective, that we will have a lot of associated land-use change,” says Daniel Itzamna Avila-Ortega, co-founder of the Mexican Center of Industrial Ecology and a Ph.D. trainee with the Stockholm Resilience Centre; he has performed research on the possibilities of jatropha contributing to a circular economy in Mexico.

Avila-Ortega mentions past land-use issues associated with growth of various crops, including oil palm, sugarcane and avocado: “Our law enforcement is so weak that it can not cope with the economic sector doing whatever they desire, in regards to creating environmental problems.”

Researchers in Mexico are presently checking out jatropha-based animals feed as a low-priced and sustainable replacement for grain. Such usages may be well suited to local contexts, Avila-Ortega agrees, though he stays worried about possible environmental expenses.

He recommends restricting jatropha growth in Mexico to make it a “crop that dominates land,” growing it just in truly bad soils in need of remediation. “Jatropha might be one of those plants that can grow in extremely sterile wastelands,” he discusses. “That’s the only method I would ever promote it in Mexico – as part of a forest recovery technique for wastelands. Otherwise, the involved problems are greater than the possible benefits.”

Jatropha’s worldwide future stays uncertain. And its possible as a tool in the battle against environment change can only be opened, state numerous specialists, by preventing the litany of difficulties related to its first boom.

Will jatropha tasks that sputtered to a stop in the early 2000s be fired back up once again? Subramanian believes its function as a sustainable biofuel is “imminent” which the comeback is on. “We have strong interest from the energy industry now,” he states, “to work together with us to develop and broaden the supply chain of jatropha.”

Banner image: Jatropha curcas trees in Hawai’i. Image by Forest and Kim Starr through Flickr (CC BY 2.0).

A liquid biofuels primer: Carbon-cutting hopes vs. real-world effects

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